WHEN Rob Marshall made Memoirs of a Geisha, he did not film it
in Kyoto because, to brutally summarise him, the city was too ugly.
Even the practised falsifiers of Hollywood could not mask the
flaws; telephone wires hurled up as if by a mad noodle maker,
modern streets where every building is a rotten tooth, the seedy
neon, and non-stop commotion of amusement arcades.

Visitors to Kyoto have two choices: succumb to a monumental
depression or avert the eyes. The only way to love the place is to
hop from one exquisite pocket to the next, seeking gardens so
sublime they stun, approaching temples so gorgeous that nothing
else matters, and then deliberately blanking out what's in between.
Everyone does it, Japanese included.

"The unseen for us does not exist," wrote Junichiro Tanizaki in
his 1933 essay on architecture, In Praise of Shadows.

"The person who insists upon seeing her ugliness, like the
person who would shine a hundred-candlepower light upon the picture
alcove, drives away whatever beauty may reside there."

Japan is not blind to faults - Tanizaki's lovely and influential
essay begins with a critique of electrical wires and tangled pipes
- but it sees past them or drapes them in a half-light.

Fortunately for Tanizaki, he lived before the arrival of Kyoto's
latest main street blight, the pachinko parlour, a variation on
poker machine gaming. In pachinko, the players are paid out in
buckets of silver ball bearings that they trade for cash at the end
of a session.

Though it is no worse than any other form of daylight robbery,
pachinko takes a murderous toll on peace and quiet. Win or lose,
the parlours sound like a metal hailstorm in a tin shed against an
exploding soundtrack of techno pop. At a World Heritage site!

It is a shock to depart Tokyo in a sleek, white bullet train on
a search for the real Japan and arrive in Kyoto to find that,
complete with high-rises, it is another metropolis. Does nothing
stand still in the country that invented the bullet train? Or was
that the key? A slower train?

With two days set aside for a trip outside Tokyo, the thought
grew into a plan: go somewhere that the bullet train does not reach
to see if the tempo was different, and perhaps, along the way, find
something of real Japan.

So instead of slipping my ticket into the exit gate at Kyoto, I
change to a local train and roll on. As the carriage dawdles slowly
north and the conductor makes soft announcements about our imminent
arrival at a dozen or more empty stations, Nara draws nearer.

As Japan's eighth-century capital and "the fountainhead of
Japanese culture" between 710 and 784, UNESCO gave Nara a World
Heritage listing in 1998.

"The historic monuments of ancient Nara bear exceptional witness
to the evolution of Japanese architecture," says the official
citation. The culture had flowered there and the city's exceptional
and closely grouped Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines were a
demonstration of continuing spiritual power and religious
influence, according to the citation.

There are no gardens in Nara to compare with the glory of
Kyoto's Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pavilion) or the Ryoan-ji, a Zen dry
landscape, but there is a vast park that leads into a primordial
forest preserved, so they say, for 1300 years.

This city of fewer than 400,000 people has that rarest thing in
Japan and, increasingly, the world: a backdrop of a bright-green
hillside free from real-estate subdivisions and golf courses.
Scarcer still, it has an embracing mountain ridge also uncorrupted
by buildings, billboards, fire towers or electricity pylons. The
hill, called Wakakusayama, is fresh and green because of an annual
winter burn-off done as part of a night time ceremony each January,
a spectacular sight.

The green slope and the mountain view that I see from my room at
the 97-year-old Nara Hotel is another marvel.

The first luxury Western-style hotel to be built in Japan, the
Nara Hotel remains a delight. The first guestbook on display in the
lobby is an artefact of a time when sophisticates from New York,
Berlin, London and Shanghai breezed into the lobby signing their
names confidently with fountain pen in copperplate.

There are no photos of Mr Geoffrey and Mrs G.M. Dodge of New
York or Miss St Maur-Shiel of Dublin or Mr Hotsmith-Ryland of
London, but I picture them in pale suits and Panama hats, pausing
on the stairs for a closer look at the oriental panels and
pictures, and meeting up later in the grand dining room that, in my
book, ranks among the most genuine and atmospheric in Asia.

I arrived in Nara with a black eye. Racing for the office lift
so I could get home to pack, I tripped over, went headfirst into
the lift door and ended up in the hands of a kindly nurse, who
recommended that I have my head X-rayed.

Looking a fright, I choose dinner in the hotel's Japanese
restaurant. The chef, perhaps sensing that my confidence was shot,
recommended a fortifying dish of eel in egg broth with a julienne
of bamboo shoots. As a starter, he sent me a cold appetiser of
lotus root with mustard and sesame paste served with soft soy curd
and wasabi. It came to the table in an emerald-green egg cup with a
single poached river shrimp on a large black tray. I felt instantly
better.

The next morning, wearing dark glasses, I left the hotel after
an excellent three-course American breakfast in the grand dining
room, and unfolded the map given to me at the railway station
information centre.

Almost straight away, several of the 1000 deer that roam free in
Nara Park and near the major temples and shrines, wandered into
view.

The animals nudge at tourists and will eat anything, including
banana peel, but probably prefer the special crackers sold for 150
yen on street corners. Don't let the elderly women who sell the
crackers fool you with their jaunty umbrellas and smiles; they seem
to belong to a cracker cartel that divvies up the takings at the
end of the day and they keep the deer, flagrant shoplifters, at bay
with short sticks.

The thousands of school children who descend on Nara every day
love to pat the deer and play with them but I thought only of Lyme
disease, a devilish infection caused by the deer tick.

Nara is an easy place to enjoy, and though it could be better,
there is English-language signage. The city has a special
significance for Australians because its beauty inspired then prime
minister Gough Whitlam as he was negotiating the treaty of
friendship and co-operation (informally called the Nara Treaty)
between Australia and Japan, our biggest trading partner. Nothing
in the city records its minor part in our history, but Mr Whitlam's
awe is recommendation enough for a visit.

By far the most impressive of the museums in Nara is the
Kofukuji National Treasure House, an arresting small collection of
ancient and flawlessly carved deities, gargoyles, plump young
princes and supernatural beings, many of them so exquisitely done
that they seem almost animated.

Set in the same walking-friendly complex as the five-storey
pagoda and several other Buddhist landmarks, it is a fulfilling way
to spend a morning. Press on to the giant 600-tonne Buddha at
Todai-ji Temple, so large that its construction is said to have
consumed all of the gold and bronze in Japan and, as a reward for
all that deer dropping dodging, it's time for lunch.

The covered arcades of the town centre are thick with cafes and
small restaurants, though none is as busy or interesting as Ten
Ten, a trendy jazz spot in a converted warehouse near the centre of
town. The menu suggests a lunch set of either yakitori chicken
skewer, hamburger or Japanese rice ball and comes with rice, salad,
pickles and soup. Though the restaurant has a big variety of herbal
and regular teas and Japanese desserts including rice dumplings
with golden syrup and green tea cakes, I make for the Kai Street
Gallery Factory Freespace, and relax with a cappuccino and berry
cake followed by a walk around the shops. Later that evening at
Mellow Caf, the most stylish and newest Italian eatery, there is
delicious pasta and pizza.

A single night in Nara is not really enough but, in the
interests of budget and balance I move for the second night to
Ryokan Seikan-so, which was built as a brothel in 1916 and
converted to a hotel in 1957.

The Bakelite telephones in the rooms seem to date from when it
opened and have been long since disconnected. I'd be surprised if
the manager ever got any complaints about this. There is a shortage
of power points, too, but for one night, who really cares? The
hotel is clean, the rooms are big and the glassed-in balcony
overlooking the garden is an ideal place to sip green tea and
read.

Rooms at Ryokan Seikan-so, none of which seemed to have private
bath or toilet, are in a quadrangle around a garden of sculpted
trees, azalea and arched stone bridges. Guests bathe communally,
Japanese-style, and the rooms have woven mat floors, paper screens,
sliding doors and futons. A neatly pressed yukata (Japanese cotton
dressing gown) is on a small table.

There is an authenticity to it. At night when it's quiet, a
paper screen door slides open in a room across the garden. In Nara
just an hour beyond Kyoto, there is harmony in a fragment of an
old, but still real, Japan.

Deborah Cameron is The Age Japan correspondent.

Fast facts

Getting around: Check on latest exhibitions at
the information desk outside the railway station and collect a free
English language map. Nara is easily navigated on foot and city
buses run to tourist attractions.

TRAVEL SPECIALS

1152637806230-theage.com.auhttp://www.theage.com.au/news/japan/number-one-without-a-bullet/2006/07/13/1152637806230.htmltheage.com.auThe Age2006-07-15Number one without a bulletTravelWorldWDestAsiaWDestJapanhttp://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2006/07/14/nara_wideweb__430x308,0.jpg

The pagoda at Kofukuji temple is silhouetted against a burning Mount Wakakusayama in the ancient Japanese capital of Nara.